


Found

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Prompt Fics [105]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Allergy Attacks, Angst, EpiPens, Episode: s05e24-25 Grave Danger, Episode: s06e01 Bodies in Motion, Episode: s06e04 Shooting Stars, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nick Stokes Whump, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Post-exhumation from his premature grave, Nick Stokes is a changed man in more ways than one and ashamed of a new weakness that he tries to hide from everyone, including himself.But even the deepest buried secrets have a way of being found.
Series: Prompt Fics [105]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540795
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21





	1. Paranoia

**Author's Note:**

> A fic prompted by an anon on tumblr, with combined ideas and inspiration from @12percentplan, @impossiblepluto, @dannilea, and @deltajackdalton–let me make it clear this fic literally wouldn’t exist without any of them, the best parts of this fic will no doubt be their doing.

One by one, they emerge from the dirt that pours into the hourglass container that’s depleting of time. The stream had slowed enough for the miniscule insects to wade through, and the first bite came from the soldiers that had infiltrated the cave of his pants, planting their flag of discovery on his ankle and bringing the rest of their army behind them.

He doesn’t realize at first that they’re fire ants, just a trick of delirium, the pinching needles of waking numbness.

Two by two, he screams and slams his body against the confines of his prison, wondering if it will be enough to get rid of the onslaught of ants that begin to pop up all over his body. He tries to shake them off but more pour through the cracks. He wants to stomp his feet, snuff out their lives but in doing so, could very well set off a permanent burial of his body in collapsing the glass coffin’s already damaged walls in a fit of force.

It would be quicker to just shoot himself.

Three by three, and he loses track of the number of bites after the ninth. Nine is always the number that seems to burn in his mind just as his flesh is flayed and devoured by the clamping pinchers of fire ants that he gets an up-close look at when one crawls across the bottom lip of his eyelid.

He shuts his eyes before the splotches of red overtake his green hell entirely.

Four by four, and he spits some ants out of the stampeding swarm in his mouth, blows them out of his nose. Digs them out from eating the gum that’s still in his ears. He takes the gum out entirely and the previously silenced sounds of his own heavy breathing are amplified in surround stereo. The fan has never sounded so loud, yet the clatter of his gun and the remaining glow stick don’t seem to match up to the squelching of his disturbed flesh, to the muted pattering of tiny insect legs all over his skin and the walls of the box, to the tiniest of chirps from his assailants, the foreign communication that he doesn’t understand as he takes precautions to block all entryways into his body with torn bits of latex and cloth shoved in his nose and ears.

While he’s thankful that his shirt is tucked into his pants, that doesn’t stop them from crawling through his clothes.

Five by five, he can hear his mentor’s voice educate him on his studies of insect attacks not unlike this one. He vaguely remembers a victim the found stuffed in a locker box having been devoured by ants, remembers Super Dave’s hesitation, remembers the disgruntled comments from Brass as he kicked at his feet, remembers the suffocating hazmat suits used for autopsy.

He remembers Grissom telling him that if you don’t move, they lose interest and don’t bite as much.

Six by six, he starts to miss the skin cells, the blood cells that are being taken away from him, knowing that he’ll never get them back, wondering just how disfigured his body must be becoming, especially around his hands--his hands are the only part of him that he can’t seem to control enough to keep absolutely still. His boiling fingers twitch and clench tighter onto the ends of his shirt though he forgets his collar and feels the ants circle his chest in a burning spiral, over his rapidly beating heart.

One bite in particular around a more sensitive piece of skin makes him wonder how much longer he can endure this.

Seven by seven, he tries to dream of heaven, wonders if he’ll meet his southern ancestors, reunite with known family members that have passed--like his grandfather who never lied--find the fallen comrades--like Detective Lockwood--that he’s lost in the line of duty. He prays that his surviving friends and family take their time before they meet him on the other side. He wonders if he’ll somehow end up trapped under the devil’s domain instead, because in the pain all he can think of is the worst parts of his life, his mistakes, his failures.

The disappointment he cultivated in others of himself.

Eight by eight, the ants seem like they’ve never eaten before in their life, and what little sanity he has left within him tries to identify where they might have come from, paired with the type of soil packed around his prison. What good would that do, because there’s nobody around he can tell his location to.

Will he ever be found?

Nine by nine, he thinks he’s fine, just as he had found an oddly comforting stagnation in his confinement, he convinces himself that this is survivable, too. It won’t be the ants that do him in, it’ll be asphyxiation that does him in, shock be damned because if he was going to fall into shock he would have already but somehow the venom has seemed to form a relationship with the blood in his body, keeping him in this painfully numb state of restraint as he traps his screams in his lungs and falls into a hallucination of his own autopsy.

His father tells him he’ll look great at the funeral, and his mother will appreciate that.

Ten by ten, he thinks he hears a familiar voice call to him, garbled by the spin of the fan churning beside him but they’re too late, as another voice, a littler one shouts shrilly in his ear, “The end!”

There’s a moment of silence, and the song starts again--louder, more intense, he feels bubbles of skin boil _everywhere,_ even inside the crinkles of crow’s feet sprouting from his tightly squeezed eyes. He feels his throat close and the fan stops and the opportunity for air is stolen from him just as he was stolen away from his own life and laid to rest before his time.

But he’s not in the coffin, and the air is not circulated from above in the barest amount to keep him alive, no, it’s in full supply, free for exchange of shortened, strained, panicked exhales as his eyes snap open.

He’s above ground, in a park, having a picnic with his sister, Sally and her son, Ashton.

It’s his nephew that sings the song, and unintentionally sends Nick into a flashback, but he can’t and doesn’t blame the kid. He doesn’t know any better, doesn’t know much other than he’s visiting his favorite uncle who seems to be sick with the chicken pox--“but not really, Ashton, it’s just some _really_ bad mosquito bites.”

“U’cle Nick?” Ashton asks as Nick stares up at the clouds overhead, reigning in his breath and trying not to see the giant ants floating by in the parade in the sky. He focuses instead on the warm heat of the sun, on the tiny fingers wrapped around his own. A conduit of innocence and joy to his corrupted and melancholy mind.

It’s the first time he’s been out in public since his time in the hospital which was more than a week and some spare change days ago. There’s no excuse for that, really, besides vanity.

The bites faded after a few coats of ointment.

Well, most of them.

He was told to resist the itch, warned against scratching and deepening the pinholes excavated in his skin, but he just...couldn’t help a few of the bites. The ones that are more hidden from normal view. His top shoulder. Underneath his knee. The side of his waist. The back of his head.

Which is why he can’t shave.

He wants to shave his head more than anything. Start fresh. A clean slate. It felt good before, and not only that, it made him feel almost...tougher. Meaner. Gave him an edge in interrogation and in escalating situations with suspects. He felt indestructible.

And then his hair grew back...and he was abducted. Tied up like a pig and locked away in a box never to be found again, and even if he was, the box was rigged with explosives to ensure not just his death, but his loved ones as well. No amount of strength--all of that time put in at the gym, for nothing--could get him out. He wonders if he was bald, if he still had that aura of power around him, if he would have ever been a target. Wonders if the officer would have been taken instead--the more frail of the two, if they were being honest. He had a full head of hair.

Just as he does now--It’s grown out even longer since, he thinks about styling it with some gel into an almost pompadour, because the floppy bangs tickling the skin of his forehead make him look _too_ young. Childish, almost, like his nephew.

He’s spent too much time in front of the mirror ruminating on this fact, but has spent an equal amount of time picturing the large bumps that decorate a mutated scalp if he shaves, and decides it’s best to leave it grow for the time being.

He absently wonders if his hair will grow as long and shaggy as his nephew’s as he runs a hand through and massages the youth’s scalp.

“Yes, Ashy?” he responds to the young inquisitor, turning his head to meet Ashton’s.

“Do you...Do you think superheroes are real?”

“Of course they are,” Nick smiles, not wanting to shatter the same illusions he held onto when he was young.

“Are you one?” Ashton whispers in a loud gasp with wide eyes.

“No, buddy. I ain’t that super.”

“Papa says you’re his heer-oh!” Ashton’s voice raises exuberantly, over pronouncing his words in an accent that draws Nick’s own out in exaggerated fashion.

“Does he now,” Nick swallows down the lump in his throat, redirecting his gaze from the child back to the sky above.

“Says you’re _so strong,_ that you shouldn’t even be alive right now--” Nick has to cover his mouth, knowing that those words, while innocently spoken, speak the dark truth that he’s been pondering himself--because yes, he shouldn’t have even survived what he did, and even he’s suspicious of that. “But you are, and that’s a meeracle! And Momma says that’s what superheroes are, they’re meeracles!”

“ _Miracles,”_ Nick chuckles to himself, breaking himself free of the intrusive thoughts of his own resurrection.

“If you’re a superhero, does that mean you can you fly?” Ashton asks, hopping to his feet, pointing to the sky.

“You mean...like...this?” Nick teases with a wide smile and a roar, before sweeping the young, giggling child into the air above him, blocking out the morphing clouds and putting him in place of the sun. The sunlight glows around Ashton’s head like a halo, but his smile is already bright enough to illuminate Nick’s body as he pretends to fly the child around, making whooshing sounds and sudden changes in his flight pattern to deliver a gleeful surprise.

And then, the airplane crashes. Ashton’s hands snap forward to brace the fall onto Nick’s chest, delivering a slam of pressure on an already collapsing pair of lungs--Nick lurches forward, Ashton slides off, scampering to his feet and backing away out of fear of causing anymore damage, as if he had just broken one of his favorite toys--

“U-U’cle N-Nick?” Ashton stammers, cupping his hands to his chest as Nick’s fingers twitch against his own.

Nick’s face screws in concentration, focusing on breathing in for five seconds, out for five seconds, ease himself out of what he thinks is just a panic attack when really, it’s an attack of a different nature.

“MOMMA! HELP!” Ashton screams, spinning wildly for his mother--Nick internally panics, hoping the kid doesn’t run off--and then he does--and he sinks further down into the invisible sandpit of panic swallowing him whole, that’s just what he needs, his young nephew to get kidnapped just because he couldn’t keep himself together for more than seven seconds--

He tries to roll over, get to his feet, call out for the kid but he can’t move. His legs are kicking furiously--he watches as blurry shadows approach, surround him, seem to do nothing but watch his plight-- _they’re watching, they’re always just...watching._

“Someone call 9-1-1 for god’s sake!” a light breaks through the sea, his sister’s voice, she falls to her knees, her hands hovering over--the same concern, does she touch him? Make it worse?

“Nicky, what’s going on?” she asks.

He gurgles in response. His eyes flutter closed, irises rolling upwards.

“Nick! C’mon brother, y’ain’t throwing in the towel, don’t you dare!” Furious tears rain onto his boiling face, his word bank shrinking but he wants to give her some idea of what’s going on, even if he’s not entirely aware, but tries to equate it to a previous experience, form a bridge of connection..

He thinks back to their childhood, the trips to the Halloween themed fairs and orchards with activities such as apple picking and hayrides and giant mazes of corn and inflatable spooky adventures—He remembers how there were teenagers scattered throughout, being paid less than the minimum wage, though the true payment came from seeing the pure terror on a child’s face as they screamed from a well timed jump scare.

He remembers how he had almost jumped through the ceiling of the inflated tunnel that he was crawling through, only to fall onto his back on an invisible spike of pain. He remembers wheezing. Unable to move. Choking back tears as he was helped up and hanging his head in shame as he tugged on his mother’s sleeve, asking to be taken home.

He feels just as helpless now, tugging on his sister’s sleeve as his other hand claws at the bubbling skin of his neck.

“Or—cha—urd—” a word, a signal spurting out of the narrow gap in his constricted throat.

It’s lost on his sister and his head shakes before it lulls to the side, ready to just twist and pop off from his body to relieve the immense pressure throbbing in his skull from the strain of his veins.

His eyes falter between a bulge out of their sockets, and an entrapping shutter, gaining and losing focus in such rapid succession. With the eclipsing of the sun above from the swarm of shadows still looming, still _watching,_ he’s only just able to spot the march of ants across the picnic blanket lining the bottom of his new tomb.

 _“All superheroes have weaknesses...What’s yours, U’cle Nick?”_ he hears Ashton ask innocently, as if nothing was happening.

They march in parallel lines, two by two, steering towards the new feast laid out before them.

He wonders how long it will take them to find his bones.

Assuming they’ll ever find him.

He falls into a merciless void of consciousness, awakens face to face with a fixed view of a comic book, being narrated by his nephew as he details the depictions on the page, the dialogue of the flying superhero whose name is also Nick Stokes--well, “that’s his secret identity,” as Ashton tells him.

But it’s a secret identity that’s discovered by his arch nemesis, a giant red ant with the disembodied voice from the tape that he’s come to know as Walter Gordon. The ant has a giant lasso made from an enlarged ziptie, it wraps around the hero’s body mid-flight, interrupting his soar in the sky. The hero is powerless to stop his fall down into the earth, into a glass box in the middle of an ant hill, locked away where nobody can ever find him--

He wakes up in a cold sweat in a hospital bed, and the cycle of recovery begins anew.

This time he finishes without another incident knocking him back to the start of the game. He goes back to work, but his return is not in full. There’s something different, and not just the restructuring of the team. There’s a new set of rules, though it’s not mandated by his superiors, rather, his doctor, who hands him a pen and a bracelet, and a set of instructions on what to do if he falls victim to another attack.

An _allergy_ attack.

He knows it’s impossible, but he almost wishes he would have become an actual superhero from the large amount of venom injected into his body, not unlike Spider-Man--but instead the hours spent roasting in the fires of ant venom made him allergic to any sort of sting from any sort of insect.

He’s never had an allergy before. To anything.

_“So this shit’s gonna happen every time something crawls on my skin?”_

It was an honest question he asked the doctor, because he’s never really paid much attention before to the bugs that visit his body. He’s had plenty of exposure as a young kid running around the grand pastures of Texas, spending most of his free time outdoors on hikes and runs. It’s easy to become an attraction for the miniscule vermin who have always been mostly harmless. A bee sting once or twice as a kid, but easily shaken off just like the bugs that land on his ankle. Land on his shoulder. Attach to his pants. Dance in front of his eyes.

Or in this particular instance, as he works through an offered break to finish tagging and documenting evidence…

Crawl up his arm.

 _“Well, not every time, only if it breaks through your skin._ ”

He studies the large beetle for a few moments. He almost feels himself hyper-focus, a zoom in as he judges its deadliness--it seems harmless enough, the only upset coming from the gentle pattering of its tiny feet on his skin...moving...upwards...towards his face…

_“Now, this pen is meant to help you in the event of an attack, but you have to do whatever you can to make sure you’re not alone--that’s what the bracelet is for, you just press the button to call for help.”_

He hides the bracelet underneath a wristband. Keeps pens in his kit, his car, everywhere but his pocket. He doesn’t need help.

It’s not going to hurt him, it’s just exploring the landscape of skin on his arm, crawling away from the twitching branches of his fingers.

It’s not going to hurt him, he’s sure Grissom would tell him that this bug is indeed _harmless,_ it won’t bite if he doesn’t move. So he doesn’t move. Just stares.

_It’s not going to hurt him, as he sees pinchers spread apart, descending onto his skin--_

He brushes the bug off in a sudden panic, his gloved hand swiping rapidly long after the bug is gone. He even takes a step back as he looks around, with a nervous smile on his face, wondering if anybody was there to see such a display of...paranoia. The same paranoia that creeps into him at night, making him curl up to protect himself from the shadows that strangle him. _Weakness._

Fortunately nobody is around, and the smile fades as he watches the bug crawl away on the ground, back into the dirt that calls to him to fall back in.


	2. Hurricane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick has an attack in the office that reveals his condition to the rest of the team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had this chapter half-finished ever since I posted the first one. Finally managed to finish this morning, and wow was it hard sitting on this Nick whump for so long.

He rubs his fingers against the temples of his forehead, brain on autopilot circling the same repeating numbers that appear in the ten-page long phone record. His eyes are straining and the edges of his periphery are stretching away so that he has to squint to keep focus. He wishes he had brought his glasses as a yawn escapes his lips. He’s also realizing just how hungry he is as his stomach grumbles, when a familiar voice completely breaks his waning concentration.

“Here, figured you might need a little snack while you do your homework.”

Warrick tosses a bar at Nick, he fumbles to catch it against his chest before examining the wrapper, a peanut butter bar. 

“You know I don’t like peanut butter,” Nick’s eyes narrow with a confused frown.

“I know...but  _ Poncho  _ does…” Warrick smirks, gesturing for Nick to read the brand name.

_ Poncho’s Peanut Butter. _

Nick shakes his head and joins Warrick’s amusement at his own expense.

“Never gonna live that one down, huh?” 

“Not a chance,” Warrick shakes his head before pushing himself off the doorframe, and leaving Nick with a wave of his hand. 

He leans back, a floating feeling in his chest as he presumes—and hopes—that such a tease from his stone-cold bodyguard who has shut down every attempt on Nick’s behalf of humor in the last few months is a sign that he’s finally ready to move on. Both of them. That maybe, just maybe, things can return to normal.

The hope fades as he deters from normalcy to take a desperate, uncharacteristic bite of the peanut butter bar to satiate his nagging hunger, though in doing so, pulling a disgusted face does confirm that his distaste for the stuff hasn’t changed.

At least  _ something  _ hasn’t.

The air in the lab has certainly changed, it feels thin, yet somehow thick. He’s never quite paid so much attention to the glass walls separating the rooms, offering the illusion of the wide space but shattering it with reflective barriers that make him feel like a rat trapped in a maze. 

Luckily there are still barriers, blinds to be drawn like they are now, which is an option he didn’t quite have all the other times he was observed, though he keeps one window cracked open in the boxed room. Even with the shuttered privacy, he can sense the prying eyes, waiting for a meltdown within the glass walls containing him but the joke’s on them, he’s here to work. Not to cry. He’s wasted enough time on tears, left them soaking in the sheets of his bed that’s no longer used for sleep. 

And it’s sleep he longs for as he yawns yet again, stretching his limbs and twisting in the chair to loosen his stiffened torso. He relaxes knowing that he has all the excuses in the world to go home, knowing that Grissom has loosened the leash so far that Nick can basically do whatever he wants, but also knowing that sleep is an unattainable luxury he can no longer have for more than a few minutes without worrying he’ll never wake up again. 

He compromises, one more hour work, and then he’ll take a proper break. He even nods to himself in affirmation, simultaneously itching a sudden scratch on his arm, right under his elbow. He coughs and looks towards the window, inches his chair closer before he leans over and winches it up further—first with the attempt of one arm but he has to reluctantly bring up the other, his strength still not restored and not only does he feel frail, he suddenly feels hot, especially from the exertion. Though the breeze outside is null, he reconciles that some fresh air is better than none. Maybe he’d be better off putting a fan next to him instead. 

He can still feel the phantom whirs of the motor in his right ear.

Nick returns to his assignment, he’s just about halfway through. He thinks of the numbers, arranged in the order he’s looking for— _ five, three, six, four, one, two, eight _ ...or was it  _ eight, two? _

He thumbs back to the first page, suddenly forgetting the note that his palm lands on top of when he slams it down on the table for leverage as another coughing fit erupts. 

He nearly spills the bottle of water as he pulls it to his lips, more coughs come out as the water goes in—though most of it doesn’t make it all the way.

The bags under his eyes inflate and the anchor of his eyes sink to the bottom. He can feel the skin of his lips crack as they gape open despite their recent hydration. The canals of his nostrils feel too stuffed with invisible blockage that chokes the air flow—he has more success in breathing through his mouth between more continuous coughs.

At first he thinks it’s the beginnings of a cold. 

And then the inner lining of his throat starts to cave in on itself, and a new itch develops, one that gets worse with each heave. He can feel his heart bulge out, furiously pounding and racing and bleeding through the bone-bars of his rib cage. 

That damn itch on his elbow is getting worse, and not only swelling but  _ spreading,  _ but it’s not until he twists his arm to get a better look that he sees the mass of bumps boiling from ground zero in what he realizes, was an  _ insect bite. _

No big deal, he thinks, he’ll just grab the damn pen and he’ll be fine in a few minutes with nobody the wiser—

Except it’s in his locker.

Nick’s eyes lock onto the door as he tries to get to his feet, failing at first because his legs have gone numb, an everlasting tingle trapping him in limbo—and his body certainly bends and twists as if he’s in a game of such. His arms flail as he tries to get a hold of himself, knocking his perfectly organized desk into a state of disarray, papers shuffling and flying off of the surface, drifting down to the floor just to be crushed beneath his boot. 

He gets up again, stifling his coughs as he staggers to the doorway. He slams his palm against the door as he uses his other, trembling hand to pull down one of the blinds. 

The locker room is just down the hall, but through the narrow slit of the window, the hall seems longer than ever, stretching to eternity with no end. He won’t make it without drawing attention, especially if he has to belly crawl his way there. He vaguely remembers stashing one in this room, his pseudo-office—the only other place he spends the most time besides the break room. 

He pulls away from the door and returns to his desk, falling to his knees as his feet trip over themselves. The suppression of coughs ends when the impact of his kneecap to the thin-carpeted floor elicits a grimace out of his face, and control starts to slip further and further away. 

He opens the desk drawer, straining his head to look in. Nothing but notepads and office supplies that he begins to toss out over his shoulder until the drawer is completely empty, though he still pulls it out from the desk entirely, as if the pen would have gotten glued to the corner inside. 

He mutters a curse and opens the filing cabinets that line the wall, he’s almost certain that he would have hidden it under the packed folders, a perfect hiding spot. He starts to take out the folders, hastily stacking them and ignoring how they slide over each other, creating a collapsing mess that normally would have driven him mad, but now he ignores it as he continues onto another drawer, and another, and another until the entire wall is taken apart. Even the blinds on the open window are pulled and bent and even ripped off entirely as he draws upon them for support to lift himself up.

He starts to frantically search the other desks, knocking over lamps and phones and even the entire unit as the coughing becomes deeper, more rapid. His elbow is  _ scorching  _ in an itch that won’t be satisfied, even as he breaks his own skin in an attempt for relief. With bloodied fingernails, he starts to scratch at his throat to pry off the abscess growing around his neck. 

Nick steals a glance of himself in a reflective surface as he flies to the other end of the room, he’s gone the darkest shade of red he’s ever seen, lips and limbs and cheeks swollen—but not as bad as his bubbled, bleeding elbow that gets rammed into the floor as he finally collapses onto the floor.

And in the sudden silence in the absence of further struggles, that’s when the anxiety sets in.

He’s trapped in the eye of a hurricane of his own making, pens and papers and other fallen objects strewn around him, empty drawers and overturned desks rained on with drops of his own blood.

They’re going to find him, and ask the questions he doesn’t want to answer.

_ What the hell happened in here? Were you attacked? What happened to the evidence?  _

_ Why were you hiding? _

That’s assuming he can answer at all, if he can  _ breathe  _ at all.

There’s another itch that develops on his wrist, underneath his cloth band decorated with a star that he dons as an ode to America’s team, the Cowboys—but that’s not what’s calling to him now. 

The med alert bracelet.

His last resort. 

But then that’ll create even more of a commotion than he’s caused already.

Everyone will start to whisper. Rumors floating around the lab. How he’s so weak and fragile and c _ an Nick even do his job anymore?  _

If he doesn’t press it, if he doesn’t get medical attention soon, they’ll be discussing something else instead.

Like funeral arrangements. 

A shaking hand peels off the wristband to expose the smaller, thinner one with the button that his thumb tries to press—but he can’t tell if he applied enough pressure, if the button was activated.

Luckily, though also unluckily, help arrives. 

“What the hell is going on here?” Catherine’s voice, sharp, most likely investigating the cause of the sudden disturbance in the normally quiet corner of the lab. 

Her voice keeps its urgency, keeps its authority, but loses its strength as she then barks out, “Somebody call 9-1-1! We need an ambulance!”

“Oh my god, Nicky!” Catherine cries as she falls to the floor, unsure if she should touch Nick, but still prying his hand away from scratching himself, and using the other to cup behind his head.

“What’s going on?” Grissom’s voice shoots into one ear as Nick’s eyes start to bulge against his eyelids, fighting the threat of unconsciousness because even if he’s been found, there’s still a chance he won’t survive—his heart pounding faster than ever as it’s expanding to its limit, an explosion waiting for the final tick of the clock,  _ tick, tick, tick. _

“Stay with us, Nicky,” Catherine pleads, and his focus is fast fading—Catherine doesn’t even have a face. Neither does Grissom for that matter. The room is losing details, melting into a posterized cloud of colors...but there’s one thing still as clear as day. 

One final drawer he hasn’t checked.

It has to be in there. 

As if his life depends upon it—and it does—he uses the last ounce of will in his body to stretch out his forefinger to point at the drawer, his eyes wide and pleading as they flicker between the two blobs he identifies as Catherine and Grissom—his focus starting to transfer in dizzy fashion, they pulse in and out but he can see the transition on Grissom’s face from shock to concern to understanding as he pulls the drawer open, holds up the pen that dances in his hand and—

The last thing he sees is Grissom, eyes wider than ever before, stabbing his body with the pen that triggers a sizzling release in his body. 

And his mind.

* * *

It’s some sort of automatic response for all of them to investigate the ruins of Nick’s destruction to the small office room, though it’s not the scene of any sort of crime. They don’t need their kits, but Sara grabbed hers anyway. They’re not even processing the room so much as they’re cleaning it—and Catherine especially feels a sense of déjà vu, having had similar experiences with cleaning her young daughter’s playroom. 

But as they await Nick’s return from the hospital, there’s nothing better to do.

“He’s not allergic to peanut butter, is he?” Catherine holds up the snack wrapper like it’s going to break the case.

“I mean, he doesn’t like the stuff, but he’s never said…” Warrick admits with a heavy sigh.  _ “Dammit!  _ I was just tryin’ to mess around with him…”

“Unless he rubbed the peanut butter on his elbow, I don’t think you have anything to apologize for, Warrick,” Grissom adds as he examines the documents that Nick was reviewing, knowing his handwriting like he knows the back of his hand. Sara hovers behind him, leaning over his shoulder.

“What was it, then?” Greg asks, observing no other possibilities that could trigger such an intense allergic reaction.

“Remember that case we had a year ago? With the eleven angry jurors?” Grissom raises an eyebrow while he plucks up the carcass of a wasp, addressing Sara.

“Nick’s allergic to bees?” Sara squints at Grissom. 

_“Wasp,”_ Grissom clarifies. “But no, not just that. Insect venom.”

“You knew?” Catherine gapes.

“Yes, he had to disclose it to me.”

“But not to any of us?!”

“That was his choice,” Grissom sighs wearily.

“I don’t give a shit, he could have  _ died _ if I didn’t happen to walk by when I did, if you didn’t stick him when you did, though you  _ missed  _ the first time—”

“Are you mad at me or mad at Nick?”

“Both of you!”

“The ants,” Warrick scoffs in his independent realization, ignoring the banter between his bosses. “Those damn fire ants. Of course.”

“See, you’re in the clear,” Greg tries to offer Warrick. 

“You know he only got attacked by those ants because we kept torturing him with the light—”

“Without the ants, we wouldn’t have found him,” Sara argues.

“We would have,” Warrick growls with certainty. “We had enough of a direction by the end, we could have—”

“He would have run out of air sooner if he didn’t shoot that light—” Greg brings up.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t press the button so much, Sanders—”

“Me? Pretty sure it was you who jammed Archie’s mouse from pressing it so much—”

“Do you think I’m erasing my blame in this?” Though they all know Warrick is beating himself up the most over all of this.

“Talking about what could have happened isn’t going to change what’s happening now,” Grissom interjects, and they all fall silent.

“So...what _can_ we do, then?”

* * *

Nick was pleasantly surprised to find that when he returned back to the lab the next day, there were no whispers. No rumors floating around about what happened. Nobody even seemed to address him as if something had happened, just the routine small talk and shop talk as he caught up on his cases—though Grissom did offer to lighten his load, but naturally he refused. 

He wasn’t so surprised to find the office rearranged after his...incident. It’s as if he was never there. He’s thought about clearing out his spare bedroom, currently being used for storage space, for a home office that if he had made a mess in, wouldn’t have to be cleaned up by somebody else. 

But he's really surprised to see that the tornado of disorganization he made flew into the layout room, the glowing table littered with a mess of food peels and straws and pens and pamphlets, all under the purview of Warrick and Sara.

“What are y’all doing?” Nick nods into the room from the doorway.

“Oh, just getting our daily dose of Vitamin C,” Sara shrugs with knowing smirk towards Warrick as she holds a pen over an orange.

Oranges. 

They’re stabbing  _ oranges  _ with epipens. 

And pretending it’s Nick.

“You get a tan recently, Nick? Looking a little orange-tinted there,” Warrick can’t even finish the sentence without bursting into a contagious laugh that Sara catches onto. 

“Thought you were supposed to be practicing this to possibly save my life some day and...and y’all are acting like it’s some fuckin’ joke!” Nick crosses his arms, bows his head before he breathes a hollow laugh from his stomach. “This is  _ exactly  _ why I didn’t want to tell anybody about this.”

The smiles wipe off Warrick and Sara’s faces as they look down at the fruit in their hands. 

“Just...trying to lighten things up, buddy. Make you laugh.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“We didn’t mean to embarrass you, Nick—” Sara starts.

“I’m not embarrassed!” Nick scoffs though his cheeks are radiating through his flushed face. 

“We wanna make sure we do it right,” Warrick drops the fruit and leans over the counter. “Can’t risk—”

“What’s so hard about stabbing me with a pen?” Nick snaps with a sarcastic smile. 

Warrick and Sara remain silent for a beat.

“Grissom...missed,” Sara mumbles. 

“He...he what?”

“He missed at first, because he wasn’t prepared and was-was distracted and didn’t know if he was going to hurt you more than help you and didn’t have the confidence, and that’s...that’s what we’re doing. Building confidence, so it doesn’t happen again,” Sara rambles, brushing her hair out of her face.

“But you do think it’s going to happen again,” Nick retorts. “Another attack. That I’m a walking target, that one wrong move in Grissom’s office, say if I, knock over his ant farm or somethin’, and I’ll have a one way ticket to the hospital. Or if we’re at a scene, all eyes will be on me—It’s bad enough that Brass has me on a leash to the uni’s now, you know—”

“Nicky—” Warrick begins, but Nick holds up a hand.

“Save it. I don’t need your pity,” Nick sneers, and walks away with his jaw clenched.

* * *

Heart pounding.

Sweat pouring. 

Mind racing. 

He couldn’t get out of that hellhole of a bunker quick enough.

Not even when he stopped rushing out to pick up a piece of evidence, which had been a nice distraction for a few moments, until he looked up at the giant fan looming above. Taunting him. Teasing him. Reminding him that no matter how fast he runs, he can’t outrun the ever looming threat of death. That his life hangs in a very fragile balance.

That one day, the fan will run out for good and there will be nobody there to dig him out. Not Warrick, not anybody else he loves and trusts with his life.

“Are you okay?” Greg’s voice scares him out of his spiraling train of thought, winding him down to the trap of rock bottom, a place he wasn’t quite eager to return to so soon.

“Yeah,” Nick squeaks, then clears his throat before reaffirming in a breathless mumble, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

The corners of his mouth twitch as he reaches the top stair, taking the final step to moving above ground and breathing the air that’s still hot and dry, but nothing compared to the sticky humid of the underground, sucking out his air like a parasite leeching his lungs.

Greg follows him as he struts to his car with the heavy balance of evidence bags and his kit, silently offering the help to carry the load but Nick takes the burden upon himself.

He always does.

“You sound like you just ran a marathon,” Greg observes, having stopped a few steps away as Nick nearly fell into the back of his truck. 

“Jus’ a little tired, tha’s all,” Nick’s accent bloats in the increasing highness of his voice. 

He clears his throat again. Greg steps closer to him in nonchalant fashion, his hands in his pockets of the grimy jumpsuit. 

“Something in your throat?”

“No, no, just uh…” Nick’s voice trails off as he secures the evidence in the trunk of his car, his back to Greg.

Greg puts his arm on Nick’s shoulder, and at first Nick smiles to himself at the semi-intimate gesture, but immediately loses the feeling when he senses Greg holding something up behind him—sees the tool of his undoing in the periphery of his vision right before it stabs into his flesh, pressing down with a hiss that, while mostly unheard to any other normal person, is amplified to the already paranoid Nick, and the dreaded noise shatters his eardrums.

“Greg! What the hell, man!” Nick shouts, shoving the younger man off as he still tries to hold Nick steady while he starts to brush his hands over Nick’s clothing, the invisible bugs that he thinks are attacking his friend.

“You were having an attack!” 

“I wasn’t! Might be having a heart attack now, though!” Nick clutches his chest, taking wide gasps of air.

“You couldn’t breathe right!”

“Like right now?” Nick rasps out between increasingly sharp breaths.

“Maybe we should get you to a hospital—”

“No, no, no need for that,” Nick wags a finger as he hunches over. “Just need a minute to catch the wind that was knocked outta me.”

“So if it wasn’t an insect attack, what was it, because unless you fell down those stairs or something, I don’t see what could have—”

“I know what it was,” Nick wheezes. “Not bugs. Not a fall.”

“So...what was it?”

A panic attack. An  _ actual  _ one this time.

“N-nothin’ man, just forget it.” 

“Let me drive you back, at least—”

“Just fuck off, Greg!” Nick barks, shoving Greg with an overshot of force that sends him to the ground. 

Nick immediately regrets it, offers his hand but Greg just rolls away from him and gets to his feet, sauntering away. Nick clicks his tongue as he releases the final struggling breath from his body and closes his trunk door, but nearly stumbles as he tries to make his away to the driver’s seat of his car, impaired by his overstimulated body that just doesn’t know what to do with itself; muscles contracting all at once, his heart shrinking and stretching like a ball of putty, and his air reserves depleting before they can even be replenished. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, lifts his head up with a wince as he realizes that he’s burning bridges in less than half the time they were built in the first place. There are just certain things he can’t take on alone. His eyes burn when he comes to the realization that he had placed his trust in them for a reason, and he was taking that reason away.

“Greg!” he calls out, leaning against the side of his car. “Wait. I might need that ride after all. I can’t feel my fingers. Or my toes.”

“And?”

“And  _ I’m sorry... _ okay?”

Greg comes walking back, claps Nick on the shoulder before he slings Nick’s arm around his back. As they walk around the car to put Nick in the passenger’s seat, Greg examines the small tear in Nick’s shirt, the large red bump on his skin pulsing like a bullseye.

“Hey, at least I didn’t miss. Didn’t even need the magic marker.” 

Nick looks at his friend with confusion.

“Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino?”

“Yeah. Starting to hate that guy,” Nick swallows, suddenly reminding himself to get rid of that copy of Kill Bill on his DVD shelf.


End file.
